Our mouths are full of blood

You have a little something on your lips, right there at the corners of your mouth, and I think it might be blood.  If I mixed a bit of blood with these words would it be enough to color your thoughts?  Let us not exsanguinate our meaning.

What would change if sinners traded places for a day?  I would make gluttony the sexy sin instead of the sin of sex.  If I was writing the rules for this event one such that I'd pen would read thusly:

     If you are the same size, or larger than any three Somali refugees you are not allowed to comment          on anyone's choice of sexual partner.  

Here is another:  If you eat more calories than a poor Ethiopian family gets in a whole week you are subject to picketing.  Festively festooned men and women waiting for you to leave Old Country Buffet to greet you with signs such as, "Jesus hates fat people", or "Burn Bertha Burn", or the catchy yet poignant, "Gluttony is a sin (pertinent Bible verse)".  

What a ridiculous picture I have just painted.  Of course someone should tell that man in lavender yoga pants holding the sign with graphic pictures of liposuction procedures that he shouldn't be picking at the toothpick in that fat lady's jowls while he has a 2x4 stuck in his.... eye.  It's stuck in his eye.  This being a totally original idea I will have to give some thought to the best way to phrase this. I haven't worked out all the wording yet. It being an original idea and all.

Could we restrict hate from our diets?  Just cut back a bit on our ignorance and hypocrisy.  Could we do that?  Without honesty and humility there is no possibility for meaningful discourse.   

When one person eats as much as a village, while the village starves to death.  I can see this.  It is apparent. It is also apparent that how I buy my food, where I buy it from, how it is grown, and how hard it is to get it to me also have effects.  I can see these things.  My choices add food to or take food out of other people's mouths.  

No consensual sex act short of rape, incest, or pedophilia has ever caused another human being to starve that I know of.  

Here is today's creed.  I will fail to live up to it, but I must try anyways.  

1.  Tell the truth, about myself and everything.

2.  Be humble.

3.  Be mindful of the consequences of every choice.  A choice can be small, but it can never be insignificant.

This is enough for today.

Options

This is the life I have chosen,
And you won't hear me whine about it.

Yelling, sleepless, sunbeam smiles,
It's all of a one, and fuller and better than I deserve.

Sometimes it is a cage, but isn't all love a cage of sorts?
Heavy bars of responsibility.
This life is the whip that trains me into my best self.

I could leave of course.  Nothing is actually stopping me.
I am free to walk away and be utterly destroyed
While
Doing
Anything
I
Want

My appetites king, queen, judge, jury, and even god.

With great relief and a thankful countenance
I tuck the key back under my shirt.

Lonely

 I am destined to write pure shit for a while.  There might be a worthwhile thought buried deep under the steaming piles, but in the meantime there is a river of shit to wade through.

I grew up surrounded by a fog of language.  A certain way of speaking, and by default a particular way of looking at the world.  It has not served me well.

Here is what the fog sounds like.
"The world is scary and dark.  People are naturally evil.  You are better than them.  Even though there is so much humanity, it is only those who live in this fog who matter.  Those fools outside the fog are so much firewood for the furnace of an angry god."

Now that I have taken a few lurching and scared steps out of the fog the world seems brighter and more lovely.  People seem like they are doing the best they can.  The mass of humanity that is so different from me is wise about matters I have never even considered.

And I am lonely.  The friends I had before promised to walk with me, but the context changed.  Perhaps even the basis of it all changed.  The relationships dissolved.  Maybe I didn't know how to be a friend.  I don't know.  Perhaps we were never really friends.  More shit I guess.

It is lonely though.  I have never in my life looked at my fellow man with such a lack of judgement or criticism, and I have never felt so alone.

The opposite of play is not work.  It is depression.
Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt.  Perhaps it is fear.

Braunschweiger

Apparently homeless man,
sits in space between
the in and out door
at the place we all buy our food.

he is eating Braunschweiger with a spoon
beside him is a gallon of chocolate milk
somewhere between full and empty

"It's all down hill from there"
he says in a voice just loud enough,
he may not have meant me to hear it,
and he waves me on

Be careful, or not.

There are certain phrases that cross my lips so often, as

to make me pause and ask myself

is this my job?

Be careful.  Be quiet.  Be polite.  Be nice.  

Where is it written?  Tell me please.  Who has decreed that

this be my constant belligerent mantra?

Is it not just as much my imperative

to encourage risk

to teach the noisy shout

to cut with the sword that which needs cutting

Be careful, or not.  Take the risk if it is the right risk.

Learn what quiet is.  Let your shout come from the place of quiet, 

and let it be a mighty shout.

Politeness is often nothing but a disguise, and being nice is almost never enough.

Choose kindness and authenticity instead.  

These are the wise words I wish crossed my lips more often,

but I get so tired,

and the moment has passed.

Untitled

Here is a series of questions you may ask yourself. I give you permission.

What is play?  Why am I not playing?

How are you?  Why do I care so little?

How much time?  How better to fill it?  How not to fill it with drivel?

Where did that feeling, idea, notion, unction, lubrication, go to?  How do I get it back?

Who is?  Who isn't?

Are you really this close?  Why do I rarely notice?

Blasphemy

I speak blasphemy so hot it sizzles
so sexy it curls your toes
I leave behind the old name
that Good Ol' time frame,
to follow the tree hanging
brown skinned baby boy

I jumps over fences and range wide
and the farther I go the clearer
the fog seems
There's a hound on my trail
with keens senses and such,
you know the rest, I won't steal too much.

You see there has been a lie on my tongue
but sometimes lies are truth too
what about you?
Are you a lie too?
I'll just follow the brown skinned tree hanging
baby boy.

Plagiarizing Sleep

There is a part of me that wants to splash
Someone else's thoughts
Across
         The
               Page.
My will is lacking the iron to
Carve quality from chunks of
Mediocrity.

Mostly it's just rust and metal slivers.

Perhaps I sleep so poorly
Because my dream self remembers
Sleeping as a newborn
Eyes
       Shut
               Asleep

And sleeping well now would be plagiarism.

Recipe for a Fantasy

First take one giant, and dice finely.  As the pieces become smaller in size you will notice that you have reduced your  giant into thousands of half-lings.  Take one of the half-lings, and throw the rest in a lake.  They can't swim very well, and no party needs more than one half-ling.  He will serve as the party's rogue, and comedic touchstone.  Short people are funny.  Deal with it.

Next take the largest tree in the forest, and pull it up by the roots.  At this point the tree has far too much substance and interest for our purposes, so begin to methodically whittle it down.  Keep whittling.  That's right, just keep whittling.  Once you have whittled it down to a tall, but toothpick thin strand of wood  (as boring and nondescript as possible) lean it up against a stylish looking fern and it will soon start chatting to you about how wonderful it is.  All elves are like this, but your party must have one, and no one takes them seriously.

The party of course needs someone of the magical persuasion, and for this there can be no better ingredient than a gnome.  For our gnomish ingredient start with a pile of phone-books, and grind them into a fine paste.  Gnomes are made up almost entirely of useless and trivial information, which makes phone books a perfect base.  Preferably from a Midwestern town such as Canton, Ohio.  Alma, Wisconsin also works well.  Take 4 cups of the phone book paste, add burnt hair, a broken typewriter, and speak these magical words, "The party needs a magic user.  I guess.  I mean, we do need one right?  We can't just skip it this time?"  In a puff of smoke your magic using gnome will congeal before your eyes.  He will most likely kill you by accident, and will prove much less useful than expected.

For the final member of the recipe you will need a large stockpile of meat.  The kind of meat doesn't matter much, it's the quantity that matters.  Begin by making a rough shield shaped frame out of wooden planks, and then just start piling on the meat.  You want that shield to be so full of meat that the next stranger who wanders by will hardly be able to resist speaking the magic words of creation, "Looks like you've got yourself a meat shield."  Yes.  Yes you do.  It could be an Orc barbarian, or a dwarf paladin.  It doesn't make much difference.  As soon as a stranger (it has to be a stranger) speaks those words the meat will congeal into a large stupid brute who will run headlong into danger and soak up most of the damage.  They won't contribute much to the story, but you've got to have a meat shield.  For shielding you.  From stuff.

Well, there you go.  Add a pinch of story.  2 T of rivalry.  1/4 t of phobia.  1/4 cup of back-story.  1 religious fanatic.  A handful of cultists, and one extraordinarily evil villain.  Grate in  a generous amount of humor, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Bon appetit.

I begin to see now

I begin to see now
the meaning of you,
or perhaps it is
another beginning
one of uncountable many

The way you take me inside
Warmth, dwelling
Liquid bed of seeing
with eyes shut tight.

There is so little time for this
Perhaps at the end we will
have properly begun
to know the contours,
and the language of being

Together.

f#m

The shape of these four fingers
takes me there, to the beach house
by the sand and green waters.

Cool cement floors under bare foot
sweat and questions
a piano untuned by the hearth.

This shape has been
many other moments, but
this is the one that rises up

Like green weeds covering
the still waters of Lake Winona.

Growing up Christian: 9 things I wish I hadn't learned, and several I'm glad I did. (Introduction)

Starting a book is hard. I have a good idea of what belongs in the middle parts of this book, but where to begin?  That is a problem.  So, I will begin with a story.

First a little background. When I was about ten or eleven years old there was a man I knew in the church that my family has always attended.  Let's call him Steve.  Steve had an extraordinarily broken life.  He was a drug addict, alcoholic, womanizer, and actively worshipped Satan.  His life was literally a car wreck.  What I mean by that is that one night when my dad and some of the others guys from the church were out trying to talk to Steve and help him he became violent and rammed his car into my family's shiny green sedan.  That was probably the nicest car we had growing up, and I think we only had it for about 5 weeks before Steve went demo-derby on it.

Fast forward 1 year.  Steve is clean. Steve is sober.  Steve is married to the woman that he is still with today (I think they have 15 kids(it might not be that many, but it's some other absurdly wonderful amount)).  If I have ever witnessed a miracle, this was it.

This story takes place at one of our many Wednesday night church meetings.  Steve was up front that night and he told us all his amazing story of how he had been pulled out of death and destruction, and into life and a group of people who loved and cared for him.  The juicy details could not have been more appreciated by anyone in the room than that 10 year old boy in the third row who was also me.  To me it was an epic adventure, and better yet the good guys had prevailed.  It was a happy wonderful ending and I soaked it up like a pasty white sponge.

After the service I quickly went up to Steve and began to gush all over him with how much I loved his story.  I remember telling him that his story was one of the best I had ever heard.  I will never forget how he frowned and stopped me, and then said, "No Josh, your story is so much better because it doesn't have all that bad stuff in it."
I was crestfallen, but something much more insidious was taking place.  You see, this was just another in a long series of reinforcements to something I was learning as I grew.  One of several things I learned growing up that I wish I hadn't, and a few I am glad I did.  This lesson was that I was better than most other people.  I belonged to a special club made up of people who God loved slightly more than everyone else.  Furthermore, since I had been born into that club I must have a leg up on new recruits. No one ever said these things to me explicitly, and I am sure it was not intended, but I was learning it nonetheless.  While I was growing up Christian.

Conversation.

Sit-You-Down

He killed himself on Christmas day,
or so it seems, and so they say
He hung himself in the garage
and a tree grew up from the floor.
A tree grew up in a crack in the floor,
and as I pass by the window I

see my face reflected there.

We pass each other like clouds in the sky
not knowing, oblivious.  No where or why.
So much flour and so little bread
for so very many mouths
We are all shattered and dead
mirrors on abandoned sidewalks.
All puddle and weed, so many pieces
I look for you but I

see my face reflected there.

This is what we do at my house
we take in orphans and we pass the beer
We say "don't you DARE ignore the here"
and grab you by the collar.
Sit
You
Down
I will hear no more of your excuses.
Do but look around at each one sitting, and

see my face reflected there.

a birth story

These are the stories that are told. 
Stories of pain and moaning,
grasping and bleeding, fear and
jubilant relief. These are good stories.
A currency to be traded in kind.

But they are not mine.

I could hear you coming for days.  
Winston, you gregarious fat man.
Your piquant smile a knife.
Stone-of-Joy standing 
jauntily upon the world's
last island. wielding pen and 
voice at the black dragon, its mouth 
full of fear and ashes.

I could see you for hours.
Leander, Swimming your Hellespont,
and as your face appeared 
it was blue as the waves, 
and your eyes darker still
for Medusa's blood filled snakes 
were wrapped round and round your neck.
Lion-Heart you clawed away the snakes and 
swam on to your Hero and her alabaster towers.

I could smell you in the air
and taste you on my lips
Waits, Watch-man.  
You back alley balladeer.
Croaking, bleating, beating the drum
of the every day miracles midst 
every day's unique misery.
Your eyes open and your mouth 
an organ of soul
You smelled of shit, blood, sweat,
and truth, 
and then you opened your 
mouth and sang it all again, and I 
believed every note.

I took you in my arms and called you
Herbert.  My own.  Blood and sweat
of my blood and sweat.  My blood flowing 
in you and yours in me forwards
and backwards through all time.
Forever Herbert. Forever my son.

ology part un

The head and the soul, two travelers stuck in the same vessel.  Inseparable and completely unintelligible to each other.  I picture them sitting in a fancy leather apportioned train car.  They sit opposite on drab couches.  Unable to converse. One of them has a language of sorts but no voice, and the other speaks but only in wispy dry leaf crackle, in the smooth pale skin high on the inside of his lover's thigh, the full moon's reflection on a calm midnight lake, or fresh new socks on cold feet.

These strangers often agree, although they never know it.  More frequently they are grievously offended by that which the other loves.  So much so, that in a panic or rage one of them will try to leap from the train only to be violently hauled back to relative safety by the other, for neither could bear to go on alone.  Blackbird and bread.  Sand and cloud.  Element and ungent.  Earth and embrace.  No couple  has ever loved or hated as well as these intimate strangers.

Is it so strange?  When they come to a book of religion how can they proceed?  If one is thoroughly pleased the other most certainly is bound like Prometheus on the Rock.

When they meet another it is not one but two more that they must meet.  All four grasping and struggling to walk together and know even the simple truth about the other.  When they are intimate who touches who, and where?

I have no answer for this.  The strangers inside my train rumble slowly on.  They sit across from each other in a finely built and comfortable private car.  They watch. They wonder.  They wait.

Bruise again

You touched my arm and it stayed
I wear it now, hidden springs
of black water flowing underneath
my icy river's crust of skin.

If I just wait here long enough
It will come to me.
The reason why I let this happen.

I step out and it creaks and sings
Under my weight. Black feet
body, ice. fear.

I would open my mouth to speak,
But you have taken my tongue.
My lips move and spasm,
But my breath is also in your pocket.

That which is my own stretched
Naked on that bridge between now
And then.  Wet and dry.  Dry and dead.
It is as foolish to clutch at ice
As it is to swim below.

Paint

Brittle boneyard of my soul.

Bleached and quiet.

Full of vacated moments.

I alone have time to examine
our
bruises.
Yesterdays clouts painted on my arm
forced into now with a touch.
Time-travel violence.

I write to keep the fear outside.
My pen locks the door,
the paper
hides the key.
I sing the way I hurt inside.
Bruises of dark cursive on your ears.

A Dream of Great Aunt Rae

Last night I had one of those dreams that even after you've been awake for a while you are sure really happened.

I was somewhere dreamish, and I was with my Grandpa, and my Great Aunt Rae. Aunt Rae died years ago, but in my dream she was there. We used to call her the Jelly Bean lady because she always had a bowl of those delicious things ready for my young hands. In the dream she was sick and could barely talk, and I put my hands on her and prayed for peace and comfort. As I prayed she laid her head down face first and peacefully died. My Grandpa and I then began to weep, and I felt connected to him more than I ever have.

I awoke sobbing, and my face was wet with tears.

division minor

I guess things aren't as bad as they used to be,
but now they scare me more.
Things could be a lot worse, but now I understand the how.
I don't see a way out of this. I don't know which way is up.
Down is pretty clear.
It makes him cry. She just sits there and eats a hotdog.
Now they are lining up shoes on the window sill,
like invisible people who go naked but refuse to uncover their feet.
They are lined up and ready to jump.